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THE OBLIGATION OP MAN TO OBEY THE CIVIL LAW: 
ITS GROUND, AND ITS EXTENT. 



A DISCOURSE 

DELIVERED DECEMBER 12, 1850, 



ON OCCASION OF 



THE PUBLIC THANKSGIVING; 

IN 

THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIMS, 

BROOKLYN, N. T. 

• BY RICHARD S. STORRS, JR., 

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. 
PUBLISHED BY BEQUEST. 



NEW YORK : 
MARK H. NEWMAN & CO, 199 BROADWAY 

1850. 




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the j-ear 1850, hy 

RICHARD S. STORRS, Jr., 

in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
District of New York. 



S. W. BENEDICT, 
Printer. 16 Spruce-Street. 



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The following Discourse has been prepared in the usual course of 
Pastoral labor, and without reference to its publication through the 
Press. As it has been solicited for this, however, by a number of those 
in whose judgment the author is accustomed to confide, and to whom he 
is united by very affectionate ties, he has not felt at liberty to refuse it. 
In the very rapid revision which is all that he has been able to give it, 
he has corrected whatever imperfections have been noticed of expression 
and statement, and at one or two points has slightly expanded or changed 
the argument. Sentences are occasionally inserted too, which, owing 
to the length of the Discourse, were omitted in the delivery. 

The author commends what he has written, to the thoughtful regard 
of those who may be inquiring for Duty and Truth in the department of 
w-hich ft treats ; and will be abundantly repaid for the sacrifice which 
he makes in submitting it to the public, if any such shall be aided by it 
to just conclusions. 

Brooklyn. Dec. 16th, 1850. 



DISCOURSE. 



Mark xii. 30, 31. — "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy 
strength : this is the first commandment. And the second is like, 
namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none 
other commandment greater than these." 

Acts v. 29. — " Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We 

ought to obey God rather than men." 
Titus iii. 1, 2. — " Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and 

powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, to speak 

evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness 

unto all men." 

I have taken these passages, my Friends, as the theme 
of my discourse, because they hold within their compass 
precisely the Doctrine which I shall offer you ; not at all 
because I would use them for immediate impression. They 
are various passages ; not selected from the Scriptures, to 
the exclusion of others, to teach any narrow and partisan 
theory, or to carry your conviction in behalf of such theory 
by the sound of their language, — but selected from the 
entire range of the instructions of the New Testament, con- 
cerning Man's Duty toward God and toward the State. 
They represent, I think, all the classes of texts that pertain 
to this subject ; and in their combination they set before us 
what God requires of each among us, with conciseness yet 
with fullness, and with perfect authority. 

They are passages which as examined, in their principles 
and comprehensively, are nowise inharmonious. They 
agree entirely in the Doctrine which they teach us; and 
while they present that Doctrine in its entireness, and un- 
fold it into several of its relations and aspects, they in no 



6 

degree break or mar its unity. It is one Doctrine, the 
same symmetric and crystalline Truth, which we see in all of 
them ; only shedding its light in different directions. — It 
is no new Truth which they present ; no Doctrine which 
has but lately been evolved from their statements. As a 
received Doctrine among the disciples of Christ, it is older 
than any of us. It is older than the Independence of these 
United States. It goes back in its history beyond the date 
of the Protestant Reformation. It is more ancient than the 
era of the Martyrs and Confessors. It is as old as Chris- 
tianity, in its publication or in its being. Nay, — it is as 
old as the existence of Man, in an organized society, and 
under the sovereignty of God, his author. There is no other 
Doctrine more venerable than this, with the hoar of Anti- 
quity. There is none which has gathered a richer inherit- 
ance, of association and history ; none, to which we are 
summoned by a nobler army of Witnesses for it ; or within 
which we shall find, as we search into its elements, a 
higher oneness, a more self-evidencing appeal to the judg- 
ment and the conscience, a broader support for the in- 
quirer after Duty. We shall have profitably used this 
fifth Thanksgiving-Day which we spend together, if we 
thoroughly master this needed Truth. We should have had 
no such Thanksgiving, except for its prevalence in past 
time in our land. 

To state it in a single sentence — into which shall be 
fairly unfolded the meaning of the texts, that we may con- 
sider it the more carefully, and may compare it more easily 
with the scope of the Scriptures — it may be thus expressed : 
It is the duty of each man to obey the Laws of the 
State, except where they conflict with the Law 
which God has given him ; and on the reality of 
such conflict his Conscience must decide. It is 
evident that this is a somewhat unpopular Truth, at the 



present. But it is fairly inferrible from the texts which I 
have read, and harmonious, I believe, with the tenor of the 
Scriptures. Let us consider it carefully, in each of its 
particulars. 

It is the first and most obvious principle of the Divine 
Law, in its relation to Man, that every individual is respon- 
sible to it ; that every individual is bound to obey it. Its 
language, when God first gave it through his Prophet to his 
people, from the summit of Sinai, was decisive and plain : 
' Thou shalt have no other Gods before me. Thou shalt 
not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Thou 
shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not 
commit adultery.' Throughout the Law, in each of its ten 
specific enactments, it is the personal Man, made in God's 
image, responsible to him, an heir of Eternity, who is per- 
sonally addressed. It is not the Nation. It is not the 
company or congregation of men. But it is the Individual, 
whom God has formed, whom God commands. And so, 
most clearly, in the New Testament Scriptures, in the pas- 
sage which I have read as containing the Law ; where the 
Saviour sums up, into one complete and luminous announce- 
ment, the Duty of Man. The language is vivid and une- 
quivocal : ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy 
heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength ; and 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' 

It is as a Person, complete in himself in the elements of 
existence and the conditions of responsibility, that Man 
stands before God, amid his Creation. He is connected 
with others by acquaintance and sympathy, and by many 
outward bonds of alliance and fellowship. But he is never 
one with them ; as involved in their existence, or partaking 
their personality. He has his own endowment of faculty ; 
his own sensibility ; his own sphere of action ; his own ac- 



eountableness. The soul which God has given him — which 
is himself — stands always, in undissevered unity, before 
its Author. If affined to others by sympathies and regards, 
it is so affined because distinct from them ; because in its 
essence entire and personal. Each one of us, each man on 
earth, is formed in God's image, to live to his glory. On 
each hath been expended his power and skill. Each one is 
capable of rendering him service. Each is capable of 
arising, through the aid which God gives him, into moral 
assimilation and union to Deity ; of becoming partaker of" 
God's blessedness in the Future ; and of doing his will, after 
the earth has been dissolved, in the grand and unspeakable 
offices of Heaven. On each man personally, therefore, 
God's Law is laid. For each one, personally, Eternity is 
waiting. By each, in person, shall be met and undergone 
the inquisition of the Judgment. And each one shall go, for 
himself and forever, to his Recompense of Reward : he that 
hath done good, to " Joy unspeakable and full of glory ;" 
and he that hath done evil, to the Doom that awaits him. 
— In all his ways, in all his relations, alone or in society, in 
secret or in public, on the sea or on the land, whatever his 
condition and whatever his calling, whatever his connection 
with others his equals — the Man, whom God has made, is 
subject to his Law. On him, as an individual, its full au- 
thority continually presses. The glance of its Executive 
goes with him in his ways. He cannot disobey it without 
God's condemnation. 

But now this Man, thus formed of God, and personally 
and always accountable to his Law, is associated with 
others. He is not in the desert, save by chance or on occa- 
sion. He is not severed from his equals by any adamantine 
resistances, indissolubly though subtly interfused through 
the air ; nor by any as effective and more spiritual repul- 



sions incorporated with the soul. On the other hand, he is 
always attracted toward men. There are sympathies, af- 
finities, capacities for faith, for dependence and for support, 
as deep within him as life itself, that impel him toward 
others, and urge him to seek them. A permanent aptitude 
for companionship and society is established in his nature. 
Society, we may say, is indispensable to him. He cannot 
live happily, progressively, agreeably to the impulses of his 
spiritual being, except as he lives in companionship with 
others. He seeks this, as the bird seeks the air for its 
element, as the web-footed fowl seeks the sea for its pas- 
time ; and the force which urges him, is as wide in its 
reach as the range of the Race. 

This social constitution in man, God regards. He could 
not do otherwise, without denying himself, and contradict- 
ing the intimations he has wrought into the soul. He does 
not otherwise. He provides, in his Providence, a home in 
society for every man. Each human being, as he comes 
into life, finds some community established to receive him. 
He is embosomed in it through childhood. He is trained 
amid it in youth, for manhood and its endeavors. His intel- 
lectual nature, his social affections, his moral constitution, 
are imbued and unfolded beneath the influences that drop 
from its establishments and history. He enters his career 
of meridian activity, within the arrangements, amid the in- 
stitutions, beneath the laws, which it has organized. — It is 
the arrangement of God, that he should do so. Society, in 
this sense — as distinguished entirely from mere isolation 
and individualism, though as not to be confounded on the 
other hand with any precise and specific form of govern- 
ment, whether it be Roman, Grecian, American or Turk- 
ish — Society, as the shelter and home of man, and the in- 
strument of his welfare, is an Ordinance of God. Having 
made man with impulses native and quick, that press him 



10 

toward this, he furnishes him with it, at his entrance upon 
life ; and he enjoins him to live in it. 

It is a beneficent Ordinance, of Him who made us. The 
whole history of the Race, defaced and bloody as it has 
been with all the varieties of crime and fraud, is yet the 
trophy of the wisdom that establishes Society. It is the 
indispensable condition of happiness and of progress. Iso- 
late men from one another and they degenerate, inevitably. 
Put them each by himself, in the desert of the Anchoret, 
on the pillar of the Stylite, iaa the cell of the Monk — and 
they become fanatical, selfish, and rude. They tend 
towards Barbarism, as the stone towards the centre. The 
genial humanities, the graceful and delicate sensibilities, 
the taste for Art, for Letters and for Science — the apti- 
tudes even for a just, humane, and purifying Religion — die 
out of the soul. It becomes debased and disorganized, as 
it is not balanced by the equipoise, nor girded by the 
strength, nor refreshed by the graces, of others around it. 
The will becomes violent ; the imagination grovelling ; the 
moral sense coarse ; the affections sluggish. There is no 
accumulation ; no developement, or advancement. The 
earth might almost as well have been left to the herbs and 
the beasts that preceded man— it might almost as well have 
been left untouched by the Spirit of God, just as it was be- 
fore the darkness was swept from over it, and the light was 
poured on its rugged and waste orb — as to have been 
peopled by a race of men intelligent but isolated, noble in 
constitution but separate and antagonistic ; united by no 
sympathies ; compacted into no State. The destined Fu- 
ture — of illumination for the Race, the universal diffusion 
and establishment of the Truth, the preparation of the 
earth for the mastership of Christ — could never have been 
realized through such a system. 

It is when society begins, that advancement begins. 



11 

With that come the ever-recurring necessities for inter- 
course ; for the interchange of thought, and of the products 
of industry ; the opportunities and the calls for the exercise 
of sympathies — inweaving men as vital bands ; the de- 
mands on the intellect, on the moral conviction, on the 
heroic and achieving yet submissive will. Protections come 
with society ; alliances, and strength ; the motives to enter- 
prise, and the openings for it ; the stimulations to constant 
developement and progress ; the impulses and aids towards 
the attainment of a symmetric and powerful manhood. In 
its normal state, it girds one around with influences for good. 
It gradually becomes organic, vital; having roots in the 
Past, and a present life. A History 'and a Usage sur- 
round it with their spirit. Religion finds in it a proper 
sphere for the diffusion of its forces ; and if it come as a 
Divine and purifying Power, as the Religion of Christ, it 
sheds beneficent influences abroad. It becomes incorpor- 
ated into institutions, worships, systems of Faith, historic 
and ancestral. It gains a vantage-ground from which to 
reach individuals with more power, and to accumulate influ- 
ence from age to age. Beneath it Society becomes flexile 
and strong. Its freedom, generosity, humanity are ad- 
vanced. It gets muscle, too, and fibre, and the ligaments 
of power ; in the railways that traverse its land, and the 
steamships that spread their banner of cloud on all its 
seas ; in the magical wires that flash intelligence from one 
end to the other, as if Omniscience had glanced across it ; 
in all the interlacings of commerce, acquaintance, similarity 
of pursuits, relationships, legislations, and a common reli- 
gion. Then every trade, and every profession, and every 
department of human effort, finds place and welcome. The 
agriculturist produces. The merchant transfers. The 
smith and the wright fashion implements for either. The 
skilful craftsman elaborates the ornaments which wealth 



12 

demands. The expounder of the custom and the rule unfolds 
these to the citizen. The healer of disease administers to 
the sick. The preacher of the Gospel brings its messages 
to men. The poet catches his inspirations from the realms 
of the Unseen, and going up upon the wing of fancy brings 
back the thoughts that make his pulses keep music as they 
beat, that shall breathe a new force into other men's hearts. 
The artist embodies in the marble, or pictures upon the 
canvass, the visions of Beauty that arise upon his thoughts, 
and patiently carves for the column of society its decorated 
capital. The man of wealth distributes of his substance. 
The poor man gathers from the other's abundance. — All 
are connected. The lines of a common dependence and a 
common support frame all into a Whole. The smith is 
brother to the artist. The man who turns the furrow has 
fellowship with him who sings to him of Dreamland. The 
merchant and the mariner, the healer of the sick, the ex- 
positor of the Law, all are co-working. And he is intrinsi- 
cally the highest among them, who contributes the most to 
the general welfare ; who puts the most force into social ad- 
vancement. 

By such organic Society among men the progress of the Race 
must be worked out. Out of it there must come — yea, out 
of it there shall come, as it is pervaded and renewed through 
the Truth — the realization of the state foreseen by Pro- 
phets, and certain to Faith ; from which, although so far, 
we even now may sometimes catch the fragrant breeze, and 
hear amid the distance Arcadian murmurs ; the state, 
when violence and oppression shall have ceased on the 
earth ; when Christ shall reign, the King of men. In its 
relation to that, God's ordinance of Society as appropriate 
to man, becomes invested with the grandest importance. 
The Institution of the State, as a residence and a defence 
for the persons whom it embraces — of the State, with its 



13 

appropriate magistracies, tribunals, and laws,— is a mighty 
and durable Corner, established of God, upon which rest 
the good, and the promise, and the hopes of the World ! 
No man may innocently refuse to accept it. 

And now it is evident, as we carry forward our thought, that 
any particular Society which may be organized among men on 
this general basis, may do many things which the Individual 
cannot. It may do many things, which he has no power to 
do ; — build cities, make treaties, colonize countries, carry on 
operations upon the national scale. It may do many things 
which he, as an individual, has no right to do ; enact laws 
for others than himself, establish tribunals, appoint officers, 
execute penalties. It may do whatever is necessary to its 
own preservation and just defence, and to the accomplish- 
ment of the good of the members who compose it ; while it 
does not contravene the Law of its author, or violate the 
principles of natural equity. If it be needful for the citizens 
that statutes be made against forgery and theft, or for pun- 
ishment of slander, the State may enact them. If it be 
needful that the murderer, having forfeited his rights in the 
commission of his crime, be imprisoned or be executed, the 
State may secure him, and enclose him in its dungeons or 
suspend him upon its gibbet. Whatever is needful for the 
preservation of the Society in the accomplishment of the 
well-being of the individuals who compose it, among things 
that are indifferent or are intrinsically just, that, Society can 
do ; and as an institution of God, for the benefit of Man, 
its decisions must be respected. 

But it cannot go further. It cannot overrule and it can- 
not annul, for any individual, the principle or the precepts of 
the Law which God has given him. What one man cannot 
do in this regard, that the thousands or the millions asso- 
ciated with him — even though they be established in the 



14 

permanence of the State — cannot do or attempt. That 
Law is intrinsically superior to such attempts. As it 
emanates from God's Authority, it can only be changed by 
that Authority. As it is the expression of God's Holiness, 
it cannot be changed while that Holiness stands. As it is 
adapted, in the wisdom and the goodness of its Giver, to 
the nature and the condition of him whom it addresses, 
so it cannot be changed while Man remains. No State has 
power to annul or amend it. No State can make it binding 
by a particle the less, on every person embraced within it. 
No State can ward from any the penalty of transgression. 

If it can do this, where is given its authority? Where 
has God said to man — in what one sentence or fragment of his 
Word — " This is my Law for you, until the State enjoins 
otherwise "1 Upon what table of stone hath it been traced 
by Omnipotence, through what august announcement hath it 
been breathed into expression by the Spirit of Inspiration — 
" The State is not only my ordinance for man, to advance 
Mm in welfare, but it is my vicegerent and representative on 
the Earth ; empowered to enact and decide in my Name, to 
revoke my announcements and suspend my decrees"? Tell 
us, if any one can, by what array of miracle and prophecy, 
by what stupendous theophanies and revelations, what flash- 
ings of light out of the excellent glory — over what seas that 
tossed and glowed beneath the unexpected Splendor, upon 
what lands that trembled like a wave under the Presence 
of the Infinite — has so marvellous and so novel an authority 
been given 1 — Nay ! It has not been given ! We know it 
has not been. Not for a moment, not by a particle, has 
the Deity entrusted such authority to the State. — The 
State is his ordinance; and so is the Church. The magis- 
trate and the minister are equally his messengers, for 
human welfare. But if the minister teach error, God does 
not accept it. He is not made the endorser of the lie. 



15 

His authority is not given to it. Nor is the peril of him 
who takes it diminished by a jot. And so if the magistrate 
decrees wrong or does it, God's Law is not changed. The 
Right, which he commands, is no less real, is no less bind- 
ing, than ever before. It has not lost an iota of authority ; 
and the guilt and the hazard of transgressing it are not 
lessened. If the Church, which deals with the articles of 
our belief, declares to us Untruth instead of Reality — no 
matter amid what imposing ceremonial, or with what author- 
ity of Council and of Conclave, — her mandates are not 
binding. They break like the flax in the grasp of the flame 
before the intrinsic Divinity of the Truth. And so if the 
State, which deals equally with the articles of our action in 
society, command us to do wrong, if it establish iniquity as our 
Law, and require us to do not what we would that our neigh- 
bor should do to us, but precisely that thing which we would 
not for worlds he should have power to do to us — its com- 
mandments are invalid. It has outstepped its province. It 
has surpassed its authority. It is an agent who has done 
what he was not empowered to do. It is a messenger who 
has given his message untruly. The man who follows it 
will find it fatal. 

This is not strange or doubtful doctrine. The marvel is 
that in this nineteenth century of Christ it should be need- 
ful even to state it ; to go back at all to these principles of 
Religion. It could not have been if men's minds were not 
perverted by interest or by passion. The truth is so clear 
that all must see it. Philosophers and moralists have 
developed it full} ; and Jurists themselves have frequently 
confessed it. Says Calvin ; " If Rulers command anything 
against the Lord, it ought not to have the least attention." 
Says President Edwards, the younger : " Rulers are bound to 
rule in the fear of God, and for the good of the people ; and 
if they do not, then in resisting them we are doing God 



16 

service." Says Blackstone himself — that noble expositor 
of English Law, who united philosophic acumen and dignity 
with the most elaborate and wide juridical culture : " The 
Law of Nature, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by 
God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. 
It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all 
times ; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to 
this ; and such of them as are valid, derive all their force 
and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this 
original." — The truth is that the principle is too plain to 
be gainsaid. Take any illustration that puts it fairly before 
us, and an intelligent man will not question it a moment. If 
the State should decree deception as a virtue, that would 
not make it such. If it should authorise by law the commis- 
sion of adultery, God still would punish that crime with his 
penalty. If it should enjoin idolatry, or encourage suicide, 
or legalize slander, — no matter what it should do of wrong 
and wickedness — God's Law for Man would not thereby be 
changed a line. Before all States, existed that Law. 
Across all States, extends its reach. On every human 
soul is laid its authority. When States have vanished, it 
will abide. Throughout Eternity, when all the institutions 
and the fabrics of earth have been forgotten for ages, it still 
will stand ; in its majesty unimpaired ; in its authority in- 
violable ; in its execution certain. The spotless character 
and the infinite power of God are pledged to its support. 
Each man whom he has made is rightfully its subject. It 
will be permanent as his own being. — Wherever another 
law then contradicts this, this takes precedence. No rale 
which man has made, can stand before it. The Man who 
disobeys it — no matter on what inducements, no matter 
amid what popular acclamations, no matter on what in- 
junction of his fellows in the State — is in peril of the 
Judgment. 



17 

But how snail it be known by Man, that the Law which 
God has given him is in conflict with the Law which he meets 
in the State? Through what organ shall it be shown to 
him that the former requires what the latter forbids ; and 
that therefore obligation to the latter has ceased? — The 
question deserves our most careful attention. 

Wherever the Word of God has directly declared to us, 
in definite and unmistakeable terms, and in regard unde- 
niably to the act before us, that that particular act is 
wicked and criminal, and not to be done — there it will prob- 
ably be agreed that doubt must vanish. We must know, 
then, what God's Rule is ; and knowing it, must obey it, in 
distinction from every other. But oftentimes this is not so. 
There are many, they are the most numerous cases, oc- 
curring under the administration of Civil Government, where 
the particular direction of God is not given. This is not 
accident. It is not oversight. There is purpose and plan 
in it. It is the chosen method ' of God — and in it is found 
an expression of his wisdom — to give to each man, not the 
minute instructions that shall fit themselves perfectly to all 
the relations and surfaces of his life, but the general prin- 
ciples of Right and Duty, which he must receive and apply 
for himself. If God had done the former, the Scriptures, — 
addressing themselves as they do to all classes and races, in 
all stages of cultivation, and through all the Ages of human 
experience, to man and to woman, to the prince, the noble, 
the merchant, the professional man, the mechanic, the 
laborer, the beggar, the child, to men in every department 
of active life, to men under all forms of government and 
society, and connected in all the most intricate and wide 
relationships of Life — would have been too voluminous for 
any mind to grasp and master them. Omniscience might 
have given them ; but Omniscience alone could have ever 
considered them. The glory of the Scriptures would vanish 



18 

at once on such a system. The endless variety and rich- 
ness, the ever new vivacity and power, which are conjoined 
with simplicity and perfect unity in this wonderful Word — 
the blended legislation, narrative, promise, praise, which all 
shed their light upon Duty and Eternity, to which, as the 
affluent sources of instruction and impulse, all classes and 
races may equally come, within which they may find the 
Spirit of God, and at which they may drink to live forever 
— these would infallibly have been lost, if precepts and not 
principles had made the substance of the Scriptures. In 
the place of them we should have had but a Dictionary of 
precepts, a Date-book of observances. 

By such an arrangement, too, if it had been otherwise 
practicable, one main design of God in the Scriptures would 
have been thwarted. That design is to educate the faculty 
of man, to develope his powers, to enrich his resources of sa- 
gacity and wisdom. God does this by giving him principles 
to apply. He trains him upon the same general method, 
though on a higher and broader level, which the wise man 
adopts toward the child whom he would develope. To give 
precepts merely, would secure at the best but an outward 
obedience. It would be more likely to enfeeble than to in- 
vigorate the subject addressed. God gives him, therefore, 
the principles and the elements of Duty; the examples of 
his Word, to instruct in their application ; with its promises 
and its warnings, to impel and to sustain him ; — and then he 
leaves him to apply these for himself, in the particulars of 
life ; to become circumspect, cautious, conscientious and 
decisive, as he endeavors to apply them, and to gain in sa- 
gacity, in manliness and in strength. — There are multi- 
tudes of things which Ave feel to be wrong, about which the 
Scriptures are silent. Where is gambling condemned in 
them 7 Where is forgery ? Where is horse-racing, or bear- 
baiting, or gladiatorial exhibitions ? Where, libellous publi- 



19 

cation? Where the burning of dwellings? Where the 
practice which the English Law till recently allowed, of 
selling a wife in the market ? Where, even, is suicide con- 
demned ? or the burning of heretics ? or the destruction of 
bibles ? or the maiming of children, as the means of a lazy 
and begging livelihood? The principles which condemn 
these and the like practices, are undoubtedly in the Scrip- 
tures, and emphatically laid down. But the things them- 
selves are not referred to. 

And now, in regard to any such act which we may sup- 
pose to be commanded or justified by the State, and not to 
be forbidden in terms by God's word, while yet it is felt by 
the citizen to be wrong, — who shall decide what its charac- 
ter is ? Who shall decide — not on its civil legality, re- 
member ; its accordance with the statutes or the compacts 
that surround it, or its desirableness and expediency for 
the present interests of the State ; — but in regard to its 
intrinsic and radical Equity ; to its coincidence with the 
Law of Him who made us ? — It is very clear that one of 
three parties must decide it ; unless God shall send an 
angel to declare it. It must be the State, which has re- 
quired the act ; or, the Church within the State, infallibly 
inspired to speak in God's name ; or, the personal Con- 
science, in the breast of the Man to whom the Law of God 
is given, and on whom is laid the requirement of the State. 
And can we hesitate to say which of these it shall be ? 

It cannot be the State. For that has in effect decided 
already, and a subsequent decision will naturally confirm 
this. To accept the State, too, through its majorities 
or its officers, as the authoritative interpreter of what 
Equity and God's Law require of man, would be to say in 
fact that the State is infallible, or that it is, to the Man 
whom it addresses, in the place of God ; that it, therefore, 
as related to its subject, can do no wrong ; and that what- 



20 

ever it requires must be submitted to and be done. It 
would be to say that just resistance to the State is impos- 
sible ; that a cause of disobedience can never arise ; and 
that if the State should legalize murder, theft, and the 
burning of dwellings, these would be right. — Besides : The 
State, in its intrinsic constitution, is unfit and incompe- 
tent to decide a question of moral rectitude, except as a 
miracle should fit it for the office. It is made up of all 
men, born within it ; with every interest ; of every character ; 
the majority of them neither enlightened by the Truth nor 
regenerate by the Spirit ; associated for present advantage 
and defence. There dwells in the State no inspiration of 
God. It is not qualified to speak for him. It may measure 
expediencies. It may forecast the courses of its probable 
advancement. But it cannot decide on a question of Equity, 
for the individual Man. There never has been a State 
since Time began, upon whose decision in regard to his 
duty, a Man who felt himself bound to God's Law and in 
peril of destruction if he did not obey it, would be willing to 
rest for the guidance of his course. One would decide in 
one way, another in an opposite ; Russia affirming submis- 
sion to Despotism as the only Law for human action, and 
America deeming the equality of individuals as approaching 
more nearly the Divine requirement ; the England of one age 
enforcing worship to Mary, and the England of the next age 
denouncing her devotees. So always, and all the world over. 
Unless the Law of God for man is as shifting as the winds, 
as the waves, as the clouds, as mutable as the fluctuations 
of history and of government, — yea, more ; unless, without 
an absolute permanence it is a creature of circumstances, 
determined by the temporary interests of the State — that 
State is not its fit Interpreter to him whom it addresses. 
He that rests on such decision is following the blind. 

But if the State is not the party to interpret this Law, 



21 

can the Church take its place 1 Far more justly, without 
doubt. For the Church is in theory, at least, select and 
regenerate. It is composed of those who have been gathered 
from the State, by their submission to Christ ; within whom 
dwells something of the Spirit of God ; upon whose minds 
shine truths and hopes unfelt by others ; and who have thus 
gained in capacity for deciding upon duty. The Church, 
too, is not so liable as the State to be biassed in its decision 
by mere present interests. Being gathered within that and 
separate from it, and having to do with spiritual realities, 
it will be likelier to decide with justice and wisdom. But 
still the Church ! — we know that here is a sphere beyond it. 
It cannot decide for any Man what God in his Law requires 
of him. The infinite trains of error and of mischief that 
have followed its attempt, open broadly before us whenever 
we look back. We know how the Church thus appealed to 
has grown arrogant ; how it has held itself above the Soul, 
above the State, the very vicegerent of Jehovah on the 
earth ; how it has blasted with its anathemas, and crushed 
with its fury, the pious and the steadfast that have risen up 
against it ; and how, departing in this from its legitimate 
sphere, it has fallen into all most diverse errors; — how 
the Church of one age has decreed and enjoined what the 
Church of another age has rejected with scorn ; how 
the Church in one land has conformed itself to laws, which 
the Church in another land has resisted as infamous. — We 
know, in a word, as Protestant Christians, that though the 
Church in any State, as the company of the enlightened 
and regenerate within it, is more worthy than the State, 
in the aggregate of its population, to decide what is Right for 
the individual Man, even it is not competent. It is not such 
in its constitution, it is not such in its perpetually transmit- 
ted Divine Authority, that it can speak to any man in the 
name of the God who made and who will judge him. God 



22 

never meant that it should do so. If he had he would have 
said so, with infallible clearness. In the course of his 
Providence, along the history of the Past, he has built up a 
barrier against this doctrine, in the fearful accumulation of 
its results, which it would seem to be impossible for any to 
overpass. There is not one of us, within these walls to-day, 
aware of his relations to God and to Eternity, and knowing 
that his destiny was poised upon his decision, who would 
give up his conviction to the authority of a Church. There 
is that in the Soul which instinctively revolts at it. 

But if neither the State nor the Church is authorized to 
interpret God's Law for his subject, where his Word has 
not in terms decided it, how shall it be known 1 Who shall 
decide in regard to what it is? There can be but one 
answer. The Man himself, to whom that Law is addressed 
and adapted, upon whom is laid the responsibility of the 
decision, and whose personal destiny is depending upon it, 
He must decide. He must decide, in the use of the 
constitutional power which God has given him for this pur- 
pose ; the power which we denominate the Conscience. 
Not by an act of the Will, merely, determining what he will 
do at any hazard ; not in the impulse of Desire, merely, 
and personal inclination ; not in the use, simply, of the 
practical Understanding, as logically analyzing the relations 
of acts, and the results that will flow from them; as- 
suredly not in the mere impulse of the Sensibility, emotive- 
ly feeling for present suffering ; — but in the exercise of the 
Conscience ; the Sense of Right ; the Power within us which 
bears witness to the Truth, which mirrors upon its clear- 
ness the principles and the claims of the Rectitude which 
God loves, and to which God appeals, with both his Law as 
obligatory and his Salvation as needful. In the calm and 
intelligent use of this spiritual Power, the Man must decide 
on the requirements of God's Rule. 



23 

The existence of such a Power within himself, no man can 
doubt ; except as he is moved by interest or constrained by 
a theory, or has buried his faculty under years of misuse. 
It might be shown, if there were need, to be a necessary 
condition of personal accountableness ; as well as a noble 
illustration of God's wisdom. Its reality is recognized in 
consciousness, daily. When we feel the sensation of Peni- 
tence for Sin, we know that it is not Regret for Loss. It 
is radically and totally different from that. It is different, 
constitutionally, from an intellectual apprehension of inex- 
pediency and mistake ; or even from a conviction of hazard 
and exposure. It is more central than these, in the heart ; 
more poignant ; more permanent. It wrings the soul with a 
deeper power. Why does it this 1 Simply because the 
Conscience is in it. It shows that we have a conviction of 
Right, a power of apprehending that in its simple and per- 
manent unity, which is radically diverse from the power of 
calculating results and advantages. It shows that there is 
that imbedded in the soul, as central in it as its own ex- 
istence, to which the Right makes its appeal ; and which 
cannot do otherwise than respond to its claim. — We see the 
same fact illustrated in the deep and joyful gladness that 
fills the heart, the 

" peace serene, 
" As light in the sun, throned " 

in the mind, when we are conscious of doing right ; when 
the Conscience, that is, is satisfied and approving. And 
we see the same in one of its most fearful and startling ex- 
hibitions, when this peace has vanished ; when even peni- 
tence for sin has given way to a feeling more mighty and 
overwhelming ; when Remorse has assumed the control of 
the soul. That is not Fear. It is not Grief. It is not 
the pain of a felt incapacity for the accomplishment of 



24 

Duty. It is Conviction of sin, now fixed and irremediable ; a 
consciousness of Wrong, committed and irreparable ; a sense 
of the free irrevocable violation of sacred obligations. It 
comes from the Conscience, now erect and avenging, although 
so long despised and trampled. Under its power the soul 
is sometimes broken into the dust. There have been men 
who have ended their life, to escape from its anguish. The 
flickering glare of the fires of Hell, may already be seen 
in it. 

In all these exercises we see revealed the Power of Con- 
science ; original and permanent in every man. It is dis- 
tinct from the Understanding, which deals with truth ; 
entirely distinct from the susceptibility to Emotion, from 
the Fancy, from the Will. It is the highest Power, within 
us. It is in each whom God has made. It is instinctive 
and intuitive in its decisions, rather than argumentative. 
It speaks with an authority which no man can help feeling. 
It may be debased or perverted by sin ; just as the intel- 
lect may be, the imagination, the sensibility. But if left to 
form unbiassed decisions, if followed when it guides us, and 
especially if enlightened and educated by the truth, and 
pervaded as it may be by the Spirit of God, — it points to the 
Right, on its throne in the Heavens, more unerringly than the 
needle to the star in the North. We recognise its existence 
in others than ourselves ; and even when we are certain of 
the perversion of the desire in those with whom we are 
associated, and are not confident of the soundness of their 
judgment, we rely on a response from their principle of Con- 
science. If our just appeal to that is not met, we reckon 
from it to the degree of their depravity. We use, even 
unconsciously, this discovered insusceptibility of the Con- 
science to the Right, as a graduating rod by which to mea- 
sure the completeness of their wickedness. We feel the 
almost deadness in sin of the soul which we address. 



25 

It is scarcely needful to show — it is almost humiliating to 
be obliged to argue — that the existence of this faculty is 
recognised in the Scriptures. Paul recognised it, when he 
wrote thus to the Romans : " For when the Gentiles, which 
have not the Law [the Law, that is, written on stone, which 
Moses gave] , do by nature the things contained in the Law, 
these having not the Law are a Law unto themselves. 
Which show the work of the Law written in their hearts [in 
their interior and spiritual being] ; their Conscience also 
bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, 
or else excusing, one another." He recognised the same 
power, again, when he spoke of himself to the Corinthians, 
as " not handling the word of God deceitfully, but commend- 
ing himself to every man's Conscience, in the sight of God." 
The Saviour recognised it, when he simply turned his eye 
upon Peter, after Peter's denial of him ; and the Apostle 
felt it, when "he went out, and wept bitterly." Christ 
recognised it, also, when he put his charge of substantial 
adultery against the Pharisees : " And they being convicted 
by their own Conscience [which made itself heard over the 
violence of passion and the stubbornness of pride] went out, 
one by one.' 1 '' — Throughout the Scriptures, the recognitions 
and illustrations of this Power occur. They would not 
otherwise have been true to man's structure. 

How characteristic is that record of the first transgres- 
sors, that ' when they heard the voice of the Lord God in 
the garden, they were afraid, and hid themselves.' The 
consciousness of Guilt had unnerved the will. How clearly 
comes before us the remorse of the Brothers of Joseph, 
through the beautiful aptness of the Oriental narrative: 
" They said one tp another, we are verily guilty concerning 
our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he 
besought us, and we would not hear." It was years after 
the act. No voice from the skies had broken upon them, 



26 

recalling their guilt. The sense of it was within. It came 
out instantly at the presence of adversity ; " and therefore 
[said they] is this distress come upon us." So Pharaoh 
felt, after all his hardening of his heart, when he not only 
sent forth God's people to avert his judgments, but said 
unto Moses and Aaron : "I have sinned this time. The 
Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked." So 
David felt, when the prophet of God rebuked him. So 
Judas himself felt, when he went out and hanged himself, 
under the intolerable burden of the Consciousness of Guilt. 
— It would occupy hours to enumerate the instances in 
which the Scriptures respond, incidentally or directly, to 
this Power in man. They show it as a monitor. They 
show it as an avenger. They show it ineradicable by any 
force of the will. They show it restraining from wrong, 
and impelling to Duty. They show it, when violated, the 
source of a terrible self-reproach; the centre of a pain 
too deep, almost, to be endured ; in which is the prophecy of 
Retribution and Judgment. They show it as the Power to 
which God chiefly appeals. They reckon it as well nigh the 
last result of persistent wickedness — the sign of the Death 
to which sin tends — when it can be said of a man that being 
unjust "he knoweth no shame;" that his " Conscience is 
seared with a hot iron." And in all this the Scriptures but 
respond to man's Consciousness ; and by recognising and 
meeting the powers that are in us, demonstrate their origin 
with Him who made us. 

There is, then, this principle of Conscience, a Sense of 
Right, a Power that responds to the principles of God's 
Law, imbedded in Man, as an element of his being. — It is 
a universal principle ; implanted in every man at the start 
of his existence, and which he cannot obliterate, however he 
may wish it. Though he sin to the last and remorselessly 
on the Earth, it will master him again in the scenes of the 



27 

Future. — It is a principle that is natively impelled toward 
Rectitude ; to decide harmoniously with the Law of its 
author. The heart is not so impelled ; the desires ; the 
sensibility to enjoyment. But the Conscience is. It is in 
agreement, by its constitution, with Right and Justice ; and 
therefore God appeals to it with his Law. If in any case 
it decides wrongly, it is because it has been systematically 
misused, or is warped by the appeal of great advantage. 
It does not often decide wrongly. Men who differ on every- 
thing else, will almost always agree on what is ' right, in 
itself.' — It is a principle susceptible of such culture and 
developement, that, with this, it shall certainly decide aright. 
Being informed by the Truth, and exalted and enlightened 
by the Spirit of God, coming into communion with Him its 
author, and receiving of the impulses which he will give it, 
it may speak with entire authority and justness. It is the 
fault of the man who follows its impulse, If it has not been 
thus instructed and trained. — It is the only principle that 
can decide for Man, what Equity requires of him, where the 
specific declaration of God is wanting. No other man, no 
company, can decide it. His sense of personal accountable- 
ness and peril, his knowledge of the destinies which are 
pending upon his decision, his instinctive conviction of the 
fitness of things, and the impulses that are in him as deep 
as life — forbid him to rest on another's decision. He can- 
not be satisfied to give over to another, he knows that he 
cannot give over to another, this inmost responsibility. He 
lays aside the crown of his manhood, if he attempts to do it. 
In the exercise of this spiritual Power, then, a Man 
must decide when the Law which God has given him is in 
conflict with the requirement of the State. Not by his 
Desire, I say again, is this to be discovered ; not by his 
sensibility to mere present suffering ; not by his perception 
of probable advantages ; not by his Understanding, as 



28 

simply considering the connections of action ; but by tnu 
Conscience ; — that noble and spiritual faculty, in which is 
the image of God his author ; which is the vital and perma- 
nent pillar, standing erect and pointing toward Holiness, 
amid the fall of the desires ; to which God appeals with his 
Truth and his Law ; into whose hand if disobeyed, he puts 
the terrible scourge of Remorse. — He must not decide im- 
petuously and rashly ; under the influence, too much, of 
excited emotion. He must not decide without taking coun- 
sel of the judgment, and reckoning the relations that shall 
circulate from the action. He must seek the advice of the 
wise and the disinterested ; though he must not accept their 
opinion as authority. He must consult the preservation of 
all interests that are valuable, and the promotion of those 
that are intrinsically worthy; though he must not yield 
Right to mere outward Advantage. He must study to free 
himself from the influence of Passion ; from the guidings of 
prejudice, or of pride, or of ambition ; from all the allure- 
ments of self-interest and of profit. He must study God's 
word, and investigate it patiently ; endeavoring to gather its 
lessons into the heart. He must seek to become partaker of 
the spirit and sharer of the light that are treasured in Christ, 
and through union with him to feel as he feels. He must 
go up to God, in prayer for his guidance, and seek illu- 
mination from the Spirit of Holiness ; and enter, so far as 
he can, the atmosphere of Heaven, and of the Equity that 
is there. He must bring up the Conscience to the level of 
God's Law. — And then he must decide ; and STAND, on 
that decision ! as Daniel did, before the king ; as Stephen 
did, before the council ; as martyrs have done, in every age. 
Though a thousand be against him, if conscientious convic- 
tions are full and clear, he must not yield them. Though 
friends are dissevered, and ties are broken, and interests are 
damaged, and hopes are overthrown — he must stand on his 



29 

Conviction ; for God has given to him the Conscience, that 
so he may do. 

My Friends, this is right in itself. It is expedient, too, 
and wise. The arrangement of God which makes a man's 
Conscience his guide to action, is beneficent every way. 
— It is beneficent for the Individual. Would you educate 
a man best ? Tell him that he, a responsible being, and 
an heir of Eternity, must decide for himself on a ques- 
tion of Duty! — that against the pressure of interest and 
the community, against the appeals of indulgence and re- 
pose, as accountable to God, he must look for the Right, 
and steadfastly maintain it! You have put him upon a 
work that will draw out his manhood as the light and the 
air draw the beauty out of nature. You have set him 
to a task in the accomplishment of which his energy of pur- 
pose, his depth of religious conviction and sentiment, his 
vigor and enterprise of mental action, his moral capaci- 
ty, clearness and force, will all be developed. It cannot 
be otherwise. You put the man in precisely that position 
where every force is called to the noblest exertion that it 
can make ; where everything that is manliest finds legiti- 
mate scope ; where the man, if he does what you set him 
to do, asserts his prerogative, as superior to mere interest, 
and capable of the Godlike. The results of that system 
will be seen in the end, — as with the Puritans in this coun- 
try, as with the Huguenots in France, as with the perse- 
cuted band in the Waldensian valleys, — in a purer piety ; 
in a nobler self-devotion ; in a grander and more powerful 
grasp of the principles of Duty ; in a more exalted com- 
munion with God in his Holiness ; in a higher disregard of 
the blandishments of Time ; in a mightier unfolding of all 
spiritual force ; in a deeper impression on the history of 
the World. 



30 

It is beneficent for the State, as for the Persons who com- 
pose it, that Conscience thus decide. It does not tend to 
anarchy, as has falsely been said. It makes no allowance 
for that sudden and rash resistance that might arise out of 
interest. It requires that he who sets himself against the 
State and its powers, shall do it, not in the heat of a Pas- 
sion that sustains him ; not in the desperate rebound from 
an intolerable oppression ; but in the calm and principled 
resolution, which arises from the conviction of Equity and 
Right ; that he do it as an individual, only seeking to in- 
form the consciences of others. The certainty then is, be- 
forehand, that only the best and most thoughtful will resist, 
all the pressure of advantage being steadily against them ; 
and that the resistance will go forward just as fast as the 
Conviction. If the State yields to such influence it will be 
benefitted by it. If it does not, but adheres to injustice 
and wrong, then it ought in the end to be broken before 
it. — ' The State !' What is it 1 It is not lands, or ports, 
or capitals. It is the Men, who form and guide it. Where 
these are elevated, the State is flourishing. Let facts then 
testify of the tendencies of this system. Where the de- 
cree of an Infallible Church has been received as decisive 
in the questions of Right — much more, where the doctrine has 
obtained of a passive and unquestioning Obedience to the 
State — what has been the issue 1 I put it to you, my 
Friends. In Italy ; — in Russia ; — under the iron system 
of the despots of France ; — has liberty advanced 1 has in- 
telligence been diffused 1 has morality grown purer 1 has 
religion gained power 1 has Right been done 1 has the State 
been ennobled'? has even a just stability of Government 
been secured and established 1 Nay, verily ! But in all 
these the reverse ! Wherever the doctrine has stepped, it 
has blighted. Wherever it has had sway, it has turned 
men into machines. The final revolution has been the more 



St 

tremendous for its oppressions. The nation has degenerated 
to the level of its condition, or else the furious rush of a people 
that had borne till endurance became impossible has swept 
before it the palace and the throne. — And on the other hand 
take any Man, take any People, in the developement of the 
system which nurtures and educates Conscience, as the guide 
to man's Duty, as the Interpreter of God's Law for him, as 
the authority he must bow to whatever man decrees, and Lib- 
erty there advances. The State grows in power, as its citi- 
zens are enlightened. It becomes settled and established, 
on the basis of Equity. Follow it in its career ; and its 
progress shall be traced in beneficence and peace. From 
first to last its orbit shall be an orbit that brightens with 
the glow of knowledge and of heroism ; and that closes in the 
splendor of a still culminating Glory. 

Here we have reached the end of our discussion ; and 
here we see in clearness, I think, the truth for which we 
started. We see the Ground and the Extent of the obliga- 
tion of Man to obey Civil Law. He is bound to obey it, 
because it is beneficent that Society should exist ; and that 
cannot exist without officers and rules. He is bound to 
obey it, because God ordains the existence of organized 
Society; in the very constitution of Man, his creature, 
sympathetic, dependent, receptive, communicative ; in the 
course of his Providence, which brings each man into being 
amid Society ; in the precepts of his Word, which command 
as in the text this general duty. — He is bound to obey it, 
so long as and wherever it does not conflict with the Law 
God has given him ; so long as it refrains from enjoining 
iniquity. Within these limits, whatever it decrees, even 
that which injures us in person or in goods, if so be it stop 
short of the injury that is deepest — if it does not take life 



32 

without cause, or break up the family which God has or- 
ganized, or deprive us of Liberty, that 

" Sacred tree 
Fenced round, and kept from violation free, 
Whose smallest spray rent off, we never prize 
At less than life," 

— we are bound to submit to. Though it confiscate our prop- 
erty, though it derange our employments and take from us 
our livelihood — it is better that we yield, and repair the in- 
justice. But when it commands us to do a wrong act, or to 
refrain from a right one, its authority stops. It has reached 
the line that it cannot pass over. We are bound by an au- 
thority that is higher than its, to disobey it. As the subjects 
of God, and destined to Eternity, we are bound to do the 
Right, which the law forbids us ; and to refrain from the 
Wrong to which it urges us. — And on this Right the Man 
must decide ; in the exercise of Conscience ; deliberately, 
prayerfully, on his personal responsibility, but firmly and 
finally. He cannot throw off the decision upon another. 
God looks on him, and gives to him his command, and offers 
to him his Spirit and Truth ; and he must act. If he does 
what is right, then God will honor him. But if he does the 
wrong, because the State requires him to do it, — it is as 
certain as that God abhors Iniquity and loves the Right — 
as certain as that God is not limited by man's law — that 
he shall perish, when God appeareth ! 

And now, my Friends, let us briefly but frankly apply 
this to the Law which concerns all our thoughts ; the Law 
which requires us to return the black man to his Master 
at the South. What is our duty under that? We are all 
equally interested to decide this aright, and to do precisely 
what God would have us ; for we shall all, together, meet 



33 

God in Judgment. I am as deeply interested as any of 
you to decide it prudently ; for the safety of the State. My 
pecuniary interest in the preservation of the integrity of the 
National Union is not as large, of course, as yours; but my 
social and professional position, my pecuniary support, my 
present happiness, my hopes of future effort and good, de- 
pend as much as yours on that. It would be no less hard 
for me than for you to enter the Prison, if the Law called 
for that. It would be far more hard for me than for you 
to pay the penalty affixed to disobedience. What then is 
our Duty — yours, and mine — under this Law 1 

The case stands thus; and one example may illustrate 
all. Some forty-five years since a lad was stolen upon the 
Coast of Africa. He was captured by force, loaded with 
chains, and brought across the ocean — through that terrible 
Middle-Passage, which has become but a synonyme for the 
extremest suffering. He was placed upon a plantation in a 
Southern State ; either by his captor, or by one to whom that 
captor transferred him. He has toiled there for years. He 
has finally escaped from the force that has held him, and 
has come to the North. He is living, and has been living 
for years, in the midst of our society. He is married and 
has a family. He has accumulated some property. He is a 
Christian in his convictions, and a Christian in his purpose ; 
a Christian, too, in his outward profession. — If it be said 
that this is a strong case, I reply that it is proper to take a 
positive case to test a principle ; that this is a possible case, 
in its every particular ; that there are probably men now at 
the North, called ' fugitives from service,' who actualize it 
all ; and that the principle which covers it, will cover all 
that can occur ; — for as related to the intrinsic equity of the 
return of the man to bondage, it makes no difference wheth- 
er he has been in that bondage for five years or for forty ; 
whether he was himself enslaved upon Africa, or is the child 
3 



LofC. 



34 

of the man so violently enforced. No man can show the 
point, at ten years or at fifty, 'where what is wrong at the first 
becomes changed into Right, by the force of continuance ; 
where oppression and injustice, having ripened for years, 
open out into the beauty and majesty of Virtue. Especially 
can no man show an error in Blackstone, when he argues 
so unanswerably, that " if neither captivity, nor the sale of 
oneself, can, by the law of Nature and of Reason, reduce 
the Parent to slavery [as he has just demonstrated] , much 
less can they reduce the Offspring." — If the man I have 
referred to ought not to be returned to bondage, then no 
man should be. 

The Man, thus dwelling by my side, is claimed by the 
person whom he formerly served. He is pursued by the 
officer. He is in peril of being taken. He comes to me 
for help and shelter, and for counsel in flight. The law 
of Congress says to me : " You shall not give it." The 
law of Congress says to me : " You shall grasp that neighbor, 
at the call of the officer, and deliver him to his pursuers."* 

* " Sec. 5. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of all mar- 
shals and deputy marshals to obey and execute all warrants and precepts 
issued under the provisions of this act, when to them directed ; * * 

***** and all good citizens are hereby commanded 

to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law, whenever 
their services may be required, as aforesaid, for that purpose ; and said 
warrants shall run and be executed by said officers anywhere in the State 
within which they are issued. 

"Sec. 7. And be it further enacted, That any person who shall knowingly 
and willingly obstruct, hinder, or prevent such claimant, his agent or at- 
torney, or any person or persons lawfully assisting him, her, or them, from 
arresting such fugitive from service or labor, either with or without process 
as aforesaid ;******* or shall aid, abet, 
or assist such person, so owing service or labor as aforesaid, directly or indi- 
rectly, to escape from such claimant, his agent or attorney, or other person 
or persons, legally authorized as aforesaid ; or shall harbor or conceal such 
fugitive, so as to prevent the discovery and arrest of such person, after notice 
or knowledge of the fact that such person was a fugitive from service or 



35 

The question for me is, ' Is that law a Right one 1 ' Not, 
' Was it passed with the proper formalities ; or, Has it 
been certified by the proper officers'?' Not, even, as a 
primary question, ' Is it agreeable to the laws that preceded 
and that gird it ; or, Is it likely to be enforced by the arm 
of the State V The question is other and higher than these. 
It concerns me as immortal, and a subject of God. ' Is 
this law Right 1 Is it equitable and just 1 Does it agree 
with the Law which GOD has given me, when he tells me to 
love my neighbor as myself? If I seize that Man, and de- 
liver him up, — if I refuse to shelter and to help him, — shall 
I do that which God approves 1 which I can meet with joy 
at the Judgment, when human enactments shall have van- 
ished and been forgotten 1 ' 

In answer to this question, there comes to me the Law 
which God gave to Israel : " Thou shalt not deliver unto 
his master the servant which is escaped from his master 
unto thee ; He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in 
that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where 
it liketh him best : Thou shalt not oppress him." 
This specific requirement may have terminated upon the 
Hebrews ; but if its principle were right, even in that dark- 
ened and barbarous age, how can it be otherwise under the 
blaze of Christianity "? 

But leaving this special expression of God's will, and 
coming to the matter directly in hand, with the calm and 
clear examination of the Conscience ; — To what am I re- 
quired to send this Man back 1 To the endurance of a Sys- 
tem whose character I will not exaggerate by a word of de- 
labor as aforesaid, shall, for either of said offences, be subject to a fine not 
exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months ; 
***** and shall, moreover, forfeit and pay, by way 

of civil damages, to the party injured by such illegal conduct, the sum of 
one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost as aforesaid ;" etc. 



36 

scription overwrought and fanatical, but which no man can 
contemplate as a philanthropist without shuddering ; of a 
System, — as defined in its statutes and laws, drawn up in the 
calmness of legislative acts, and expounded in the solemnity 
of judicial decisions, — which puts the Man into the power of 
the Master ; to be used by him as he will, only his life 
being preserved ; to be sold by him when he will, and to 
whomsoever he pleases ; to have his wife and his children 
taken from him and sold, at the pleasure of the other — the 
Wife that is as dear and sacred to him as yours to you ; the 
Children that are as precious as yours to you or mine to me, 
when they prattle upon the knee, or nestle into the bosom. 
It is a System that forbids its subject to be taught to read 
or to write ; that keeps him ignorant, and depends on that 
ignorance for its own preservation; that directly debars 
him from accumulation and progress, making all that he 
acquires the property of the Master ; that dashes his every 
pleasure, by the sense of its insecurity ; that takes the joy 
from every hope, by hanging its accomplishment on the will 
of another ; that darkens every prospect by the shadow of a 
constant and inevitable fear ; — that takes away the Bible, 
by legislative authority ; and yet that leaves to its captive 
no rational happiness but that which is found in the hope of 
a Hereafter. It is to this System, that I am to send the 
Man back ; and it will be administered toward him with 
double rigor, because he has once escaped its grasp. 

The Man will not go. If I could persuade him to return, 
as Paul did Onesimus to his qualified condition, to one who 
would receive him ' not now as a servant, but above a servant, 
as a Brother, beloved ' — then my duty might be plain. But 
he will not go thus. He has tasted a bondage that Onesimus 
probably never knew. The master who is after him does 
not ask him to come thus. He calls him again to the rice- 
field and the plantation ; as a ' Chattel personal.' 



-37 

The Man implores me not to send him. Why should I 
send him 1 Why should I do him this mortal injury 1 He is 
my Brother, by creation ; and my Brother, by Redemption. 
Both of us are responsible to one Heavenly Father. Both 
of us are looking for one Eternity. Why should I send 
him to a bondage that he abhors? — It is a bondage not 
founded in Equity, not accepted by himself, and not obliga- 
tory upon his Conscience. In the forum of Equity, no other 
person has " property " in him. He was stolen at the first ; 
and the point cannot be shown at which that theft and its 
consequences, the Man being always at hand to assert his 
right to Himself, became established in Equity. Nay ; — 
deeper than this there comes a principle. God made that 
Man in His own image ; for His service and glory. He has 
made him Immortal ; and in point of faculty on a level with 
others ; a sharer of the nature which Christ has glorified ; a 
fit recipient of his Truth and his Spirit. How then can an- 
other have " property " in him 1 Is it by the express grant 
of his Creator 1 It is not pretended. Is it given by the 
fact of proximity and neighborhood. 1 ? Then he has in turn 
the same property in the other. It is simply the effect of 
superior force. All analysis of it ends at precisely this 
point. The Master has held that Man because he could do 
it, and never otherwise ; because his mind or his muscles were 
the stronger, and because his companions have lent him aid. 
But this gives him no right, in Equity, to his captive. If it 
did, then the Man becoming stronger would own him in turn. 
If it did, then the Strongest in the State would own all ; and 
an absolute Despotism be the only just government. The 
Master does not ' own' the Man he is after. He cannot do 
so. The Man has his own endowment of faculty ; his own 
responsibility to God his Maker; his own intrinsic and 
natural Rights — to himself, and to his powers. Except by 
crime he does not lose these. He is accountable for them 



38 

to God and to the Future. He cannot be the property of 
another, his equal. Money may buy gold, or lands, or 
horses, or brutes, but it cannot buy the manhood and the 
force that God hath given to him. It is, as Brougham has 
said, " a wild and guilty fantasy, that Man can have prop- 
erty in Man."* 

The question recurs then, Why shall I send the man to 
this unjust bondage 1 The fact that he has suffered it so 
long already, is a reason why I should not. The fact that 
he is hunted, afflicted, poor, and that his pursuers are 
strong, is just the reason why I should aid him. God tells 
me to love him, as I love myself ; to do to him what I 
would that he in turn should do unto me. Why shall I 
not help him, in his struggle for the Rights that God gave 
him indelibly, when he made him a Man 1 There is noth- 
ing to prevent, but the simple requirement of my equals in 
the State ; the parchment of the Law, which they have writ- 
ten. But where will that parchment be, when I meet this 
my Brother in the Judgment 1 Where will that parchment 
be, when Christ shall say to me, with my Eternity depending 
on his words, " I was an hungered, and ye gave me no 
meat ! I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink ! I was 
naked, and ye clothed me not ! I was a stranger, and ye 
took me not in ! — Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the 
least of these my Brethren — ye did it not to ME " ! 

Nay ! NAY ! my Friends ! I cannot do this essential 
Injustice ! Though the commands of the law were a hun- 

* Or as Blackstone expresses it : " Those rights then which God and Na- 
ture have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life 
and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested 
in every man than they are ; neither do they receive any additional strength 
when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable. On the contrary 
no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the 
man shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture." Introd. 
to Comment. Sec. 2, * 54. 



39 

dred-fold more stringent, I would not touch a hair of that 
man's head ! Though its penalties were accumulated to 
tenfold greatness, they should not shut my doors against 
him !— I will not resist the law by force and violence. I will 
even advise the Man to flee it if he can, and not resist it, 
although it hurls him back upon his right of Self-Defence. 
But I will not obey it, unless by bearing its penalties. 
The man who does otherwise is in peril of his Soul. For 
Eternity is grander than Time and its scenes I The Eye 
that shall search our life at the Judgment, is more terrible 
than that of the human Tribunal ! and he that hath done 
Wrong, shall meet it there I The omniscience of God will 
never forget it f— I do not find that my fathers covenanted 
that I should do this act ; but if they did it must be can- 
celled. I cannot renew a covenant for such crime. — It is 
said that the Union is imperilled by such refusal. But 
consequences are doubtful, and Right is definite. It is 
right to do what God's Law bids us, in relation to our 
brother, though the World shake beneath us ! I know the 
results that seem poised upon the Union. But if that is 
righteous and is worthy of preservation, it cannot require 
such iniquity to its support. God certainly would not save 
it by the disregard of his Law. And he that does the 
Right, under the government of God, is always safe. He 
falls in with the lines of God's purposes and requirement. 
He works toward the ultimate good of all ! He is in har- 
mony with that System whose law is Holiness. 

We must never do wrong ! It is right to obey magis- 
trates, as the officers of society, so long as they rule justly. 
" Put them in mind," says the Apostle, and I to-day re- 
peat and urge it, " to be subject to principalities, to obey 
magistrates, and to be ready to every good work." But 
God has given us a Law that is primary ; that concerns us 
as immortal ; that supercedes every other. When human 



40 

Law conflicts with this, it is Duty to disobey that. We 
must say with Peter ; " We ought to obey God rather than 
men." And God's Law is — decisive, unequivocal, extend- 
ing always to each of us — revealed to Conscience as Light 
is to the eye ! — " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart ; and Thou shalt love thy Neighbor as thyself." 
There is none other Commandment — on Earth, or in 
Heaven — that is greater than these. 

My Hearers, let us take this Truth as our Guide, our 
Counsellor, and our steadfast support. It is the Truth! 
the Truth of God! the Truth in which the Scriptures 
agree ! the Truth that shall stand, when we have fallen ! 
It is no new Truth, as I said at the outset. It is as old as 
Christianity. It has had such testimony to its reality and its 
value, as almost no other has ever gained. It has beamed 
like a star over every martyr-fire. It has throbbed as a life 
in every Reformer ; in Wickliffe ; in Huss ; in Luther ; in 
the Pilgrims. The costliest blood of earth, has been its 
free and noble tribute. The grandest endeavor that human 
annals have ever marked, has been given to its support. 
Men have risen up against tyrannies, have overthrown op- 
pressions, have established free States, have illustrated 
Christianity, have wrought Immortality, under the forces 
which it has given them. Political interests may heave 
against it, but they cannot overthrow it. The clouds of 
sophistry may hide it for a time, but not forever. The fury 
of the violent, who are bound to the oppressor, may be 
poured upon itself, and be spent upon its advocates ; but 
that "signifieth Nothing." The Truth is God's. He 
honors and will aid it. With every advancing Christian 
Age, it shall be seen more brightly. Old as it is, it is not 
worn. " Its radiant brow doth wear the Morning Star." 
It shall ultimately triumph. You and I may not see that. 



41 

The grass may grow above our graves, before this Truth 
has risen to its throne. But it shall come to that at last. 
It shall be incorporate into Law. It shall be recognised in 
Letters. Its forces shall mould society anew. Then shall 
oppression and war be past. Then every human law 
shall bear upon its front the beauty of the Divine. Then 
governments shall be free, and just, and Christian. Then 
prayers, and tears, the struggles of the faithful, the endur- 
ance of the devoted, the stake of the confessor, the Cross of 
Christ, shall have come unto their fruitage. Then Peace 
and Equity shall fill the earth; and every act of Right, 
done in the Past, be met in its result. And then shall 
Christ be King of men ! 

" Far, like the comet's way through infinite Space, 
Stretches that long untravelled track of Light." 

Oh ! in that day may it be found that you and I have 
labored for the Right ! have given of our force to the su- 
premacy of Justice ! have counted all as nothing in the 
comparison of Duty ! and thus have striven for human 
welfare ! — Yea ! may it be found, amid that sweeter, nobler 
Day, to which this shall arise, and in whose Glory this shall 
end — when we shall stand before the Infinite, and look down 
on the Past from the far eminence of Eternity — that we 
have done throughout our life what God commanded ; that 
human law has never bowed us to disobedience of Him; 
that we have actualized his will on Earth, have honored 
him as our great Sovereign, have sought the guidance which 
he could give us, have used for him our utmost force, 
have poured our life into his work, and now are ready to 
enter into Rest I 



NOTE. 

It cannot be needful to add citations from the writings of 
those to whom the Christian Church looks with reverence and 
love, to show that the Doctrine of the preceding Discourse is 
not novel or strange ; that it is accepted by those who stand 
chief among moralists. Authority can scarcely add to the ap- 
peal which it makes of itself to the Conscience ; and the fact 
that others have maintained it, must be familiar to all. But 
at the same time there can be no impertinence in adding such 
evidences of its soundness and propriety. And the follow- 
ing, selected from a large number compiled by a friend for 
another occasion, are so much to his purpose that the author 
takes the liberty to present them. They are purposely taken 
from writers of widely known religious views, of different 
relations, and times, and lands. But it will be seen that they 
agree perfectly in their teaching. 

Calvin writes in his Institutes of Religion, B. iv., chap 20, 

sec 32, as follows : 

" In the obedience which we have shown to be due to the authority of 
governors, it is always necessary to make one exception, and that is entitled 
to our first attention, — that it do not seduce us from our obedience to Him, 
to whose will the desires of all kings ought to be subject, to whose decrees 
all their commands ought to yield, to whose majesty all their sceptres ought 
to submit. If they command anything against Him, it ought not to have the 
least attention ; nor, in this case, ought we to pay any regard to all that dig- 
nity attached to magistrates ; to which no injury is done when it is sub- 
jected to the unrivalled and supreme power of God. On this principle 
Daniel denied that he had committed any crime against the king in disobey- 
ing his impious decree (Dan vi. 22) ; because the king had exceeded the 
limits of his office, and had not only done an injury to men, but, by raising 
his arm against God, had degraded his own authority. * # # * 
So far is any praise from being due to the pretext of humility, with which 
courtly flatterers excuse themselves and deceive the unwary, when they deny 
that it is lawful for them to refuse compliance with any command of their 
kings : as if God had resigned his right to mortal men, when He made them 
rulers of mankind ; or as if earthly power were diminished by being subor- 
dinated to its Author, before whom even the principalities of heaven tremble 
with awe. I know what great and present danger awaits this constancy, for 
kings cannot bear to be disregarded without the greatest indignation ; and 
" the wrath of a king," says Solomon, " is as messengers of death." But 
6ince this edict has been proclaimed by that celestial herald, Peter, " We 
ought to obey God rather than men ;" — let us console ourselves with this 



44 

thought, that we truly perform the obedience which God requires of us, when 
we suffer anything rather than deviate from piety. And that our hearts may 
not fail us, Paul stimulates us with another consideration — that Christ has 
redeemed us at the immense price which our redemption cost him, that we 
may not be submissive to the corrupt desires of men, much less be slaves to 
their impiety." 

Paley — not likely to err, certainly, on the side of an extrava- 
gant regard for the Ideal Right — speaks on this wise, in his 
discussion of the Duty of Obedience to civil Government ; re- 
ferring to the mode in which the Scriptures develope it : 

" They (the Scriptures) inculcate the duty, they do not describe the extent 
of it. They enforce the obligations by the proper sanctions of Christianity, 
without intending either to enlarge or contract, without considering, indeed, 
the limits by which it is bounded. This is also the method in which the 
same apostles enjoin the duty of servants to their masters, of children to 
their parents, of wives to their husbands : ' Servants, be subject to your mas- 
ters' — ' Children, obey your parents in all things'—' Wives, submit your- 
selves to your own] husbands.' The same concise and absolute form of 
expression occurs in all these precepts ; the same silence as to any excep- 
ticns or distinctions ; yet no one doubts that the commands of masters, pa- 
rents, and husbands, are often so immoderate, unjust, and inconsistent with 
other obligations, that they both may and ought to be resisted." 

Robert Hall has given the following emphatic and concise 

expression of the truth : 

" The limits of every duty must be determined by its reasons, and the 
only ones assigned here (Rom. xiii.), or that can he assigned for submission 
to civil authority, are its tendency to do good ; wherever therefore this shall 
cease to be the case, submission becomes absurd, having no longer any ra- 
tional view. But at what time this evil shall be judged to have arrived, or 
what remedy it may be proper to apply, Christianity does not decide, but 
leaves to be determined by an appeal to Natural Reason and Right." 

Dr. Hodge, in his comments upon Romans 13th, has made a 
very express and decisive statement of the principles de- 
veloped in the foregoing Discourse : 

" No command to do anything morally wrong can be binding ; nor can 
any which transcends the rightful authority of the power whence it ema- 
nates. What that rightful authority is, must be determinedly the institu- 
tions and laws of the land, or from prescription and usage, or from the nature 
and design of the office with which the magistrate is invested. The right 
of deciding on all these points, and determining where the obligation to 
obedience ceases, and the duty of resistance begins, must, from the nature 
of the case, rest with the subject, and not with the ruler. The 
apostles and early Christians decided this point for themselves, and did 
not leave the decision with the Jewish or Roman authorities. Like all 
other questions of duty, it is to be decided on our responsibility to God and 
our fellow-men." 

Such quotations might be accumulated to almost any extent. 



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